Plasmon excitation and induced emission with a plasmonic self-organized crystal

Hugo Frederich (1) , Clotilde Lethiec (1) , Fangfang Wen (1) , Julien Laverdant (2) , Catherine Schwob (1) , Traian Popescu (3) , Ludovic Douillard (3) , Laurent Coolen (1) , Agnès Maître (1)

1 INSP - Institut des Nanosciences de Paris
2 ILM - Institut Lumière Matière [Villeurbanne]
3 LCSI - Laboratoire de Chimie des Surfaces et Interfaces

In this paper, we describe the plasmonic and plasmon-photon coupling properties of nanostructured metallic films obtained by a self-assembly protocol. A gold layer is deposited on top of a self-assembled deposition of silica beads (artificial opal), which thus acts as a template. Atomic-force and scanning-electron microscopies demonstrates a periodic pattern on the metal surface with groove depth (here labelled h) ranging from 55 to 150 nm. By optical gonioreflectometry, the surface plasmon modes of this structure are probed: plasmon creation appears as an absorption dip in the reflection spectra. The plasmon dispersion relation is probed as a function of h and shows, for the smaller values of h, a good agreement with an analytical model for vanishing h. By depositing nanocrystals on the structure and measuring the fluorescence radiation pattern, we demonstrate a method to estimate the plasmon extraction (plasmon-to-photon coupling) efficiency. Finally, we use photo-emission electron microscopy to map the electric field of the plasmonic modes and characterize both propagative surface plasmon and localized (" hot spot ") plasmon modes.

Keywords: surface plasmons; self-organization; fluorescence; nanocrystals; electron microscopy

Domains: Physics [physics]

Hugo Frederich, Clotilde Lethiec, Fangfang Wen, Julien Laverdant, Catherine Schwob, et al.. Plasmon excitation and induced emission with a plasmonic self-organized crystal. ICTON 2014, IEEE and IEEE PhotonicsSociety, Jul 2014, Grenz, Austria. pp.1-4, ⟨10.1109/ICTON.2014.6876619⟩. ⟨cea-01376969⟩